Phazer
.450/400 Nitro Ex
It is not a constitutional power of the federal government to dictate how various private companies (ISPs and content providers) interact. We already have enough anti-trust laws.
URGENT - Net Neutrality Under Attack - Action Needed
meketrefe
.450/400 Nitro Ex
Agree but it is their business to make sure people cannot do whatever they want with consumers.
For example you can create your own hobby radio station and speak about whatever you want.
What you cannot do is to come out with a 3,000 Watts amplifier and mute everyone else.
That is what the FCC does, assure everyone gets an equal shot at using the media, the airwaves
in the example above.
What I am worried about is the 300+ pages they have in the new regulations that nobody understand.
Remember Obama care? ....we need to pass this so everyone can understand what is in it?
Verizon, Comcast, ATT, etc. have been lobbying hard for this. Some they get big dollars for up use
like lets say Comcast from Netflix? The current law doesn't stop them from being profitable.
So what do they want to change it so bad. Let me tell you why... they want more profits from
the share they are loosing to the smaller ISPs and also entertainment services.
Once they have the "freedom" (ak FCC and government support) the rest is history.
If neutrality was bad then we will be in worse shape than lets say UK, France, Spain etc... where
the lobby has also done the same they are tying to do here. But in fact it works better here.
Right now is deregulated, this is what they want to change but this legislation is like the wolf disguised
as sheep.
Acer-m14
20×102mm Vulcan
just think if your internet provider gets his way and they are anti gun .. say good bye to all your firearm google searches they will be banned ..
Burzum
.223 Rem
NEITHER, CNN always lies and FOX lies on occasion-(Murdoch is a globalist) and Fox has a For Sale sign hanging on it.
He who pays the fiddler calls the tune.
meketrefe
.450/400 Nitro Ex
Imagine if we had our own private roads, water, power only. Why pay any sort of taxes then?
maybe our own private military each one of us.
maybe our own private military each one of us.
Jmac00
.475 A&M Magnum
Who do you believe? thats what this boils down too
Mr. Pai claims ISPs won’t block access or throttle content
These are the real facts. Before Title II, the internet was so “free and open” that…
Mr. Pai claims Title II keeps ISPs from building new networks
Here’s another claim Commissioner Pai doesn’t want you to fact check, but:
Mr. Pai claims repealing Title II won’t hurt competition
As we mentioned above, ISPs tried to interfere with the services their customers could access and courts had to step in to stop them.
The FCC tried to craft net neutrality rules in 2010 called the Open Internet Order but the ISPs sued and won. The courts told the FCC that the only way to guarantee a free and open internet was using their Title II authority. Without those protections, any of these things would be legal:
Mr. Pai claims there won’t be fast lanes and slow lanes
Let’s break this down: We won’t have fast lanes and slow lanes, we’ll have “priority access” and…non-priority access? Well gosh.
Please help us protect Title II one more time!
This week we co-signed a letter with more than 300 other companies—businesses Mr. Pai gleefully ignores—urging the FCC to retain the Title II internet protections. Now we need you.
Go to Battle For The Net to start a call with your representatives in Congress. Tell them to publicly support Title II protections.
The FCC votes on December 14.
We’re only powerful when we work together.
Oh, also: that post about automatically unfollowing the #net neutrality tag—it’s not true. It’s really not. That’s not who we are. Whatever happened, we haven’t been able to reproduce it. We tried. A lot.
But if it were true—which it’s not, we feel compelled to say again—THAT’S EXACTLY WHY YOU SHOULD CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES and demand a free, open, and neutral internet.
We can do this one more time, guys!
Mr. Pai claims ISPs won’t block access or throttle content
These are the real facts. Before Title II, the internet was so “free and open” that…
- Comcast blocked P2P file sharing services (EFF).
- AT&T blocked Skype from iPhones (Fortune) and, later, wanted FaceTime users to pay for a more expensive plan (Freepress).
- MetroPCS blocked all streaming video except YouTube (Wired).
Mr. Pai claims Title II keeps ISPs from building new networks
Here’s another claim Commissioner Pai doesn’t want you to fact check, but:
- AT&T’s own CEO told investors that the company would deploy more fiber optic networks in 2016 than 2015 when the FCC passed Title II protections (Investor call transcript).
- Charter’s CEO said “Title II, it didn’t really hurt us; it hasn’t hurt us” (Ars Technica).
- And Comcast actually increased investment in their network by 10% in Q1 of this year (Ars).
Mr. Pai claims repealing Title II won’t hurt competition
As we mentioned above, ISPs tried to interfere with the services their customers could access and courts had to step in to stop them.
The FCC tried to craft net neutrality rules in 2010 called the Open Internet Order but the ISPs sued and won. The courts told the FCC that the only way to guarantee a free and open internet was using their Title II authority. Without those protections, any of these things would be legal:
- Your ISP launches a streaming video service and starts throttling other streaming services until they’re unusable.
- Your phone company cuts a deal with a popular music streaming service so it doesn’t count towards your data cap but lowers your overall data limit. If a better service comes along (or your favorite artist releases new tracks somewhere else) you can’t use it without incurring huge data fees.
- A billionaire buys your ISP and blocks access to news sites that challenge their ideology.
Mr. Pai claims there won’t be fast lanes and slow lanes
Let’s break this down: We won’t have fast lanes and slow lanes, we’ll have “priority access” and…non-priority access? Well gosh.
Please help us protect Title II one more time!
This week we co-signed a letter with more than 300 other companies—businesses Mr. Pai gleefully ignores—urging the FCC to retain the Title II internet protections. Now we need you.
Go to Battle For The Net to start a call with your representatives in Congress. Tell them to publicly support Title II protections.
The FCC votes on December 14.
We’re only powerful when we work together.
Oh, also: that post about automatically unfollowing the #net neutrality tag—it’s not true. It’s really not. That’s not who we are. Whatever happened, we haven’t been able to reproduce it. We tried. A lot.
But if it were true—which it’s not, we feel compelled to say again—THAT’S EXACTLY WHY YOU SHOULD CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES and demand a free, open, and neutral internet.
We can do this one more time, guys!
Gunright
.45 acp
OK, I will bite on this. Like most discussions these days, the phrases used are intended to sway the discussion. "Net Neutrality" certainly sounds good, because - don't we all want the network to be neutral (fair) to everyone?!? Of course we do.
The reality is that network infrastructure isn't free. The hardware costs money, the facilities they reside in cost money, the people who support them cost money. Each and every computation device has limits to its ability to process information, and that includes network devices. The demands on network capacity have increased at an astonishing rate - as an example I saw in a AT&T blurb from 2016 when they were high bidder for spectrum (something like $16 billion dollar cost) that the amount of data transmitted increased 100,000x between 2007 and 2016.
The OP mentioned peering agreements. To further explain this, the "Internet" wasn't invented or created by Al Gore, nor does the US Government provide the Internet backbone. Those nasty, greedy companies like AT&T pay for and own the interconnect fiber, cable, and tons of networking equipment. They also make agreements with other institutions to provide transport for traffic over their network. This isn't always as described, and there can certainly be fees associated with peering agreements.
(The following is simplified): A I mentioned, a networking device is NOT unlimited. As internet packets flow into a device, they are put on a queue. The queue is processed and the device will then forward the packet to the next device in the network (there can be multiple paths through the network). A decision has to be made at the device on which packet to process next. Does it process them in FIFO (first in, first out) order? Does it pick the next to process based on some other factor, e.g. the source IP (source address), destination IP (who it is going to), port, or other factor? "Net Neutrality" says the queue needs to be processed in order, regardless if most or all of the traffic (and load on their systems) is from Netflix or whomever. I maintain as a computer scientist, and an economist, and most importantly as a capitalist, that the priority decision is one that the provider of the transport should make - not the government. For example, shouldn't they be able to offer higher priority transport at a higher cost? In fact, don't we WANT them to be able to do this - and for applications such as remote surgery to be able to leverage guaranteed low latency agreements?
The battle here is between the content creators and providers and the Internet transport providers. The content creators (e.g. Netflix) have a great thing going. They have been able to raise their rates over time and gobble up an ever increasing portion of the Internet transport providers capacity - without paying for it. Using edge servers (e.g. Akamai) helps Akamai, but is not a large revenue source for the transport providers. In the meantime, the content transport folks (e.g. the AT&T's) have had decreasing margins on their internet services and cell service.
Part of the pro Net Neutrality argument is based on the so-called "last mile" issue. That is, it is supposedly cost prohibitive to build out the local to the home infrastructure, and thus this is a natural monopoly, and thus should be subject to government regulation. The reality of this in a wireless world is suspect - we are close to the point where laying fiber or cable to homes is foolish and immaterial to the argument.
But the emotional argument is powerful - we demand our Netflix not be messed with by those evil Comcast's of the world, and that is the Trojan Horse used to get the government involved. If you think that government control will be limited to economic aspects given control using their "Net Neutrality" ability to regulate under the 1934 Communications Act, you are fooling yourself.
The reality is that network infrastructure isn't free. The hardware costs money, the facilities they reside in cost money, the people who support them cost money. Each and every computation device has limits to its ability to process information, and that includes network devices. The demands on network capacity have increased at an astonishing rate - as an example I saw in a AT&T blurb from 2016 when they were high bidder for spectrum (something like $16 billion dollar cost) that the amount of data transmitted increased 100,000x between 2007 and 2016.
The OP mentioned peering agreements. To further explain this, the "Internet" wasn't invented or created by Al Gore, nor does the US Government provide the Internet backbone. Those nasty, greedy companies like AT&T pay for and own the interconnect fiber, cable, and tons of networking equipment. They also make agreements with other institutions to provide transport for traffic over their network. This isn't always as described, and there can certainly be fees associated with peering agreements.
(The following is simplified): A I mentioned, a networking device is NOT unlimited. As internet packets flow into a device, they are put on a queue. The queue is processed and the device will then forward the packet to the next device in the network (there can be multiple paths through the network). A decision has to be made at the device on which packet to process next. Does it process them in FIFO (first in, first out) order? Does it pick the next to process based on some other factor, e.g. the source IP (source address), destination IP (who it is going to), port, or other factor? "Net Neutrality" says the queue needs to be processed in order, regardless if most or all of the traffic (and load on their systems) is from Netflix or whomever. I maintain as a computer scientist, and an economist, and most importantly as a capitalist, that the priority decision is one that the provider of the transport should make - not the government. For example, shouldn't they be able to offer higher priority transport at a higher cost? In fact, don't we WANT them to be able to do this - and for applications such as remote surgery to be able to leverage guaranteed low latency agreements?
The battle here is between the content creators and providers and the Internet transport providers. The content creators (e.g. Netflix) have a great thing going. They have been able to raise their rates over time and gobble up an ever increasing portion of the Internet transport providers capacity - without paying for it. Using edge servers (e.g. Akamai) helps Akamai, but is not a large revenue source for the transport providers. In the meantime, the content transport folks (e.g. the AT&T's) have had decreasing margins on their internet services and cell service.
Part of the pro Net Neutrality argument is based on the so-called "last mile" issue. That is, it is supposedly cost prohibitive to build out the local to the home infrastructure, and thus this is a natural monopoly, and thus should be subject to government regulation. The reality of this in a wireless world is suspect - we are close to the point where laying fiber or cable to homes is foolish and immaterial to the argument.
But the emotional argument is powerful - we demand our Netflix not be messed with by those evil Comcast's of the world, and that is the Trojan Horse used to get the government involved. If you think that government control will be limited to economic aspects given control using their "Net Neutrality" ability to regulate under the 1934 Communications Act, you are fooling yourself.
Gunright
.45 acp
I can change providers.
Just think if your GOVERNMENT is anti-gun, and decides firearm searches are not in the "public interest".
Target
6.5 Creedmoor
Repealing Title II would be like letting a car company own the roads and banning a competitor from the highways.
Who is publishing these " facts" and are they they truth?
I am very cynical so I treat everything I hear to the wisdom of Obi Wan Kenobi :
"So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view." : "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
Lines like the one above are cute but forgot to say " car company own the roads that they built and banning a competitor from their highways.
Who is publishing these " facts" and are they they truth?
I am very cynical so I treat everything I hear to the wisdom of Obi Wan Kenobi :
"So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view." : "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view."
Lines like the one above are cute but forgot to say " car company own the roads that they built and banning a competitor from their highways.
Acer-m14
20×102mm Vulcan
and your providers are ?/ 1 or 2 choices and both are the same ...
libertysnake
.338 Win Mag
That's just false. If Netflix wants to be able to serve customers, they need to pay for increasingly bigger pipes of bandwidth from either ISPs or telecom companies like Level3, et al, that own large portions of the network out there. No one is ever not paying for it, I assure you.
"Edge servers" or Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) like Akami provide caching. What this means is their content is kept on servers that are at physically locations around the country. Closer to customers = lower lower page loads and faster video buffering (ping/response time). This isn't exactly cheap, but it's fast for customers. It still costs Netflix money.
So I'm not quite sure what you're talking about saying that companies like Netflix aren't paying costs. Bandwidth costs money, period. It's a very simple equation for ISPs. They should be charging enough in service fees to both end users and businesses alike, in a general sense, that they can provide transport for the bandwidth they promise. They should be accounting for that in their costs.
meketrefe
.450/400 Nitro Ex
Has anyone read the 300+ pages of proposed changes?
Small ISPs and other small BIz. are saying they will be hurt from this so in the end the little guy will pay the price like we always do.
Remember Obama reverted the course? They wanted the same thing originally until they were forced by the people.
They want more regulation by deregulating first. Confused? Well they have a regulation to limit the scope of what they can regulate.
Once you take the brakes off then all bets are open.
The free speech is not there, yo have youtube, facebook, etc... applying their rules but if we allow the government traffic police to
take over then who can guarantee they might turn off forums like this?
Use your heads folks. They offer with one hand and hit with the other.
Small ISPs and other small BIz. are saying they will be hurt from this so in the end the little guy will pay the price like we always do.
Remember Obama reverted the course? They wanted the same thing originally until they were forced by the people.
They want more regulation by deregulating first. Confused? Well they have a regulation to limit the scope of what they can regulate.
Once you take the brakes off then all bets are open.
The free speech is not there, yo have youtube, facebook, etc... applying their rules but if we allow the government traffic police to
take over then who can guarantee they might turn off forums like this?
Use your heads folks. They offer with one hand and hit with the other.
I can't tell you how much I have read about this Net Neutrality issue. I think the more I read, the more confused I get. I do not know if I am for it or against it.
I have had it explained to me by different people, the more it gets explained, the more F'ed I feel.
Someone tell me how I should think on this issue and why?
I have had it explained to me by different people, the more it gets explained, the more F'ed I feel.
Someone tell me how I should think on this issue and why?
libertysnake
.338 Win Mag
You should be for it. Think of it like a water system -- if you pay for water. You pay for access to that system, and pay for the water you take out of it. The water isn't free, you get a bill. In the case of the internet, you get a set amount of speed normally (mbps), but they may also cap you at a max amount of bandwidth (total amount of gb or tb downloaded per month).
Right now, if both Netflix pays their bills for their own bandwidth (their ability to receive all of their users requests), and you pay your bill for your bandwidth (you ability to stream X amount of speed from the internet as a whole at any one given time), there are no additional charges on top of that. That's because as it stands now, the ISP's job is to use those service fees to continue to lay lines and connections so there is enough flow of bandwidth for their users to reach the destination they'd like on the internet.
Removing Net Neutrality would allow ISPs to discriminate against Netflix and charge either them, or you, higher rates. Some say the rates are for the increased amount of usage that Netflix or you, connecting to Netflix, would be using. But that's a bunch of horse shit, because you're paying for X amount of internet speed (mbps) into their network. Who gives a damn what you connect to? Didn't you just pay them for that given amount of bandwidth?
The fear is that the end result of internet having fees on a more per service basis is that it would increase the complexity of the pricing, result in the internet becoming more walled off to other parts of the network, and would slow business growth because of an artificial barrier to entry.
I'm for neutrality. The definition of an ISP should be that they provide service into their networks and other networks the comprise the internet. They should be permitted to charge services fees and absolutely make a profit from that. Once the data hits the lines, it should be 'just data' and where it goes shouldn't matter -- the only concern the ISP should have is getting it to the destination it need to go to.
meketrefe
.450/400 Nitro Ex
In theory we are all against more goverment intervention and that isnagaonat neutrality or any other form of regulation. But what I dont get is this huge piece of legislation that only favors the largest ISPs when in fact they are alredy getting profits from us and from big consumers of bandwith like for example netflix. The little regulation we have is to assure continuity and fair access to everyone, once you remove the neutrality yo are actually open the door for official and arbitrary marque regulation.
Like obama care. Lets pass it to find out what is in it for us!
I am all for removing net neutrality if they present a 10 page plan that assures the only regulation is to avoid harming the unrestricted and unmonitored access and that isps do not have preferential tratment nor they can tamper with free traffic inclil uding predatory tactics.
The current proppsal of changes do not say that.
spat
.700 Nitro Express
While what you say is correct, we haven't ever needed the government to enforce that before, why start now ?
I fear giving the government any more control of the internet *at all*. No matter what boogie men they claim make it necessary.
Bottom line is that while I don't trust ISPs as far as I can throw them, I trust government even less.
spat
.700 Nitro Express
I can easily imagine an internet without neutrality. So can you, its the one we have now.
Why start now?
Because:
NOW is when these ISPs have decided to increase their bottom line by charging people fees to carry their traffic, even when those people are not direct customers of that ISP.
NOW is when these huge corporations who create content AND own the pipes are starting to throttle or block traffic to competing content, just to drive sales to their own content.
NOW is when these ISPs, who for years have said "unlimited", have decided they want to limit after all, and the 'package' that you purchased thinking you'll have "unlimited" access suddenly has limits.
You fear giving government "control", yet they aren't really taking control. They are merely stating an ISP cannot differentiate based on the source or destination (supposedly).
As stated earlier in this thread people should read the proposed changes, and make a decision for/against.
This can be hard as a lot of people who use the Internet regularly don't really understand how the technology that the Internet exists on works.
What "Net Neutrality" is, is what the Internet started out as. Free and unfettered access to information, whether it is a video, email, news site, whatever. You bought access to the Internet, and the ISPs didn't care what you did with it. Like telephone, you could call your mom, or plan on robbing a bank. The Telcos were exempt from liability, much like gun manufacturers are not liable now, and ISPs had that same 'immunity'.
This is what the Internet was before these big mega-corps started buying up huge portions of it and trying to paywall all of it off to feed their bottom line.
What the Obama regulations did was codify that into our government, to try to keep these greedy mega-corps from essentially destroying this access.
What Ajit Pai wants to do is remove these regulations to the mega-corps will be able to "monetize" every aspect of their portion of the Internet
(much like Disney "monetizes" every aspect of what they make/purchase - like Star Wars or the Muppets) until the Internet, as a whole, ceases to exist as anything other than huge Local Area Networks who cannot talk to each other. Now they want to be able to view what traffic you send, to monetize it, or prevent it to push traffic to their own stuff, without also having the liability of permitting "illegal" traffic.
Jmac00
.475 A&M Magnum
Government intrusion, ISP regulation, cost, cost,cost...
what this all boils down too, is can I still download porn?
what this all boils down too, is can I still download porn?
Strongly disagree.
Gunright
.45 acp
What you are saying is false. Netflix pays for their connectivity to the network, they don't pay for the transit costs across OPN (other people's networks). Regarding Akami (CDN), I am very well aware of how Akami works. Yes, it costs Netflix (and others) money to buy Akamai services. I worked with Akamai and was an investor in Akamai (and made a decent chunk of change on the stock which I bought when it was down to $2/share way back in 2002 after the dot.com crash).
Netflix does not pay ISP's (AT&T, Comcast) money for delivery of their IP traffic. They pay for connectivity to the backbone, NOT for all the networks that their IP traffic goes over. Well, that isn't quite true. In 2014, before the "Net Neutrality" rules went into effort, Netflix had entered into some peering agreements. For example, here's an article about AT&T: Netflix is now also paying AT&T to improve streaming quality. In addition, a CDN might have a peering agreement with the likes of AT&T. That is up to the CDN and the provider to determine, Netflix is a client of the CDN in that case.
The issue is if such agreements should be legal. I say yes, even though I might not like that as a consumer of Netflix.
Down to the basic's: Should the operator of networking equipment connected to the network of networks (aka Internet) be able to prioritize IP packets that transverse their network. Yes or no?
Gunright
.45 acp
This is quite frankly garbage. Placing the Internet under the domain of the 1934 communications act (i.e. under the control of the FCC) is much broader than just saying that their will be free and unfettered access to information. Title II of the 1934 communications act makes ISP's "common carriers" and was done in 2015 by a 3-2 party-line FCC vote when the courts ruled that the 2010 Open Internet rule was invalid. In 2015, the FCC enacted rules to reclassify broadband under Title II as common carriers. That meant that they were subject to special laws and regulations (similar to things like interstate gas pipeline companies or taxi companies.
Let me ask a question. Should Uber be able to do surge/low demand pricing? That is, should the Uber rates be set, regardless of time of day, day of week, and demand for their drivers? Should they not be allowed to offer discounts based on low demand?
Now apply that question to Internet Protocol (IP) packets. Do you have a different answer? If so, why?
Marine Cpl
.577 Tyrannosaur.
How does this affect censorship? IE not being able to go on a certain website to obtain news because it costs more and being forced to only get your news from Twitter or Facebook that's included in the basic plan?
Or am I looking at this wrongly?
Or am I looking at this wrongly?
There was no problem with this control when it was that way before Obama changed it to let gummint run things. so I wouldn't expect problems when it is reversed to how it was before the Kenyan inserted his "fix" of what wasn't broken.
meketrefe
.450/400 Nitro Ex
meketrefe said:
Agree but it is their business to make sure people cannot do whatever they want with consumers.
What I mean is opening free range to predatory practices.
That is what they do in other countries. not good.
Agree but it is their business to make sure people cannot do whatever they want with consumers.
What I mean is opening free range to predatory practices.
That is what they do in other countries. not good.
Jmac00
.475 A&M Magnum
the only thing we should be worried about is "the gatekeepers" blocking certain websites and their control of the speed at which content is delivered.
meketrefe
.450/400 Nitro Ex
The gatekeeper will become the government. It should be as efficient and effective like is many other things they do.
Neutrality is the devil you know.
libertysnake
.338 Win Mag
There should be expenses to get into the backbone then, or OPNs. Once data enters a network it should just be bits. Does the amount of mbps matter? Of course. I'm not saying companies should not be permitted to charge for the amount of data crossing their networks. That's fine. The fact that the data is coming from Netflix should make no difference. It should be only the amount that matters.